When we travel to visit the last remaining wild horses on this planet, we often ponder why human beings are so fascinated by wild creatures these days. Of course, there are millions of answers that also impact, in varying degrees, everyday life with ...

In general, horses that have been accustomed in a casual and relaxed manner to as many external stimuli as possible during their foalhood tend to develop laid-back personalities when they grow up. In doing so, it is important to proceed with caution,...

The sequence of lessons, and the size of rewards are very important parameters that influence the animal’ learning success, and thus can determine whether our training will be successful or not. Leo Paul Crespi already proved that his trained rats...

RPlus is the scientific term for positive reinforcement. Positive interaction is the background model that governs our way of training horses but also the way we publish our contents. Our work aims to literally present positive reinforcement through ...

A target always represents an objective for the horse; it follows the target because it is attractive for the horse due to its positively charged meaning. Thus, target training can be considered an opposite to conventional training with whips which ...

Lying and lying flat are behavioral responses we can establish as circus lessons that can be requested by giving a specific signal. They can emerge out of a shaping process, and they can be established by capturing a natural form of behavior. In my opinion...

Many forms of horse behavior we train or observe in the circus, in classical or in liberty dressage can be traced back to the behavior stallions tend to display to overawe others, and thus, to the field of social behavior. Of course, mares can display...

Signal control is a complex topic in positive horse training. This means, we aim to make our horse understand the meaning of signals as well as the according behavioral response, but also to understand whether we request that response or not in a specific...

Our young horse should get to know many different significant training contents little by little. So, it needs to develop a concept of the direction, speed, and gait we want it to move. Likewise, when working with positive reinforcement in particular,...

Every training method has advantages and disadvantages. For example, supporters of pressure-based training methods particularly emphasize the possibility to quickly achieve results. However, after highlighting their successes they tend to forget to ...